Monthly Archives: May 2009

A school teacher injured his back and had to wear a plaster cast around the upper part of his body. He wore it under his shirt and it was not noticeable at all. On the first day of the term, still with the cast under his shirt, he found himself assigned to the toughest class in the school. Walking confidently into the rowdy classroom, he opened the window as wide as possible and then busied himself with desk work. The classroom became a bit unruly and he admonished them. This happened several times. While working at his desk, the strong breeze from the window made his tie flap annoyingly. He kept rearranging and rearranging the tie as the class become more and more unmanageable. Finally, becoming disgusted with the wayward tie, he stood up and took a big stapler off his desk and stapled the tie to his chest in several places. Discipline was not a problem from that day forth.

Advisory! Advisory! Advisory!

A New Zealand man fled with his girlfriend after receiving millions of dollars in a banking error.
http://jeffreyhill.typepad.com/english/2009/05/its-not-often-that-new-zealand-gets-a-mention-on-the-english-blog-but-heres-a-story-from-the-times-which-would-make-a-good-s.html

From the Twitterverse:

* AngelaMaiers RT@cristama…this year has transformed me (and my teaching) in so many ways. (I feel the same- so much I owe to PLN!)
* shareski Kramer on Openness and Transparency. @courosa you should use this in a presentation http://bit.ly/lV1Bo
* AngelaMaiers RT @Zweibz7 @problogger: if there’s one lesson I’ve learned this week it is – ‘build your network before you need it’.
* paulallison Looking for stories about resilient students in your classroom: First a request, then an invitation. (If you’ve .. http://tinyurl.com/nmvh8f
* AngelaMaiers RT @education_com @BNBuzz – giving free book 2 kids who complete summer reading program http://bit.ly/bU2pj

Shout Outs:
Thanks to our Robert Jackson in Kiev for the link to the Aspire One as Kindle.

News:
Report: Costly plan failed to improve schools
A $100 million investment in Miami-Dade County’s lowest performing public schools failed to boost student achievement, according to the school district’s final report on the program. The School Improvement Zone was a three-year push at 39 elementary, middle and senior high schools throughout the county. Students participated in a specialized reading program and had a longer school day than students at other schools. They also had a longer school year. ”The zone program exhibited at best an inconsistent impact that was limited to the elementary grades,” program evaluators wrote. The report also noted that the extended school year — starting a week early and tacking extra days onto the end — was ineffective.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/story/1049341.html

New CEO: Gates Foundation learns from experiments
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spent billions of dollars exploring the idea that smaller high schools might result in higher graduation rates and better test scores. Instead, it found that the key to better education is not necessarily smaller schools but more effective teachers.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gBfu1Zu7aIsLeH_NGiMaHbc4AEnQD98F58R80

Senate bill supports 21st-century skills
Shelley Pasnik, director of the Education Development Center’s Center for Children and Technology, said she is pleased to see the bill addresses more than simply putting more technology into schools. “Students need to go beyond just learning today’s academic context to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills, communications skills, creativity and innovation skills, collaboration skills, contextual learning skills, and information and media literacy skills,” the bill reads.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=58949

School counselors face big workload in Illinois
Bartlett High School counselor Stephanie Fullhart has been keeping track of nearly 340 students this year, an overwhelming caseload in the eyes of many counselors. Of the 10 states with the largest school populations, Illinois’s ratio was second only to California, which had 966 students per counselor in 2006-07. The ratios are calculated by dividing a state’s prekindergarten-to-Grade 12 enrollment by the number of guidance counselors reported to the federal government. There is little public pressure to add counselors. Parents usually pay more attention to the number of students per teacher. “We need to start getting the word out about who professional school counselors are, so administrators see them as pivotal in making school change,” said Christina Nolan, president of the Illinois School Counselor Association and an assistant professor at National-Louis University.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-counselors-west-zone-27-may27,0,3192041.story

Human anatomy for everyone!
You don’t have to leave home to take an interesting class. You don’t even have to pay. By Linda K. Wertheimer

Not all higher education costs a pretty penny. You can peek into some college classrooms around the world, experience lectures in text, audio, or video at any time, and, in some cases, take the final, all without leaving home — and all for free.

Twenty Interesting Ways* to use Google Docs in the Classroom(*and Tips)

http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dhn2vcv5_8323t58h3ft

1. The National Middle School Association is looking for an editor for their Research in Middle Level Education Journal (RMLE).
2. NMSA’s Annual Conference: NMSA ‘08 Technology Focus Video. NMSA ‘09 Invitation Video: Indianapolis, IN Conference November 5-7, 2009. Individual Registration is now open.
3. ATTENTION Michigan Association of Middle School Educators & Friends: MAMSE is putting together a bus for the trip to the National Middle School Association’s Annual Conference in Indianapolis, IN this fall. Ride down to the conference in a luxury bus. With all the conversations with middle school teachers on the bus, I wonder if we could call this a mini-MAMSE conference? There’s nothing like getting together with people who love the people we love: our students. Getting together with folks like that is energizing and priceless. Email Teresa Sutherland for information and details. Don’t forget to mention you heard about it on Middle School Matters.
4. NMSA 09 Conference Connection: Stay connected before, during, and after the conference! Start your packing lists for the conference using packwhiz.com!
5. Keynote speakers for NMSA ’09 have been announced: Daniel Pink (political connections) opens and Rick Wormeli closes.
6. NMSA has a new publication on the role of middle grades in drop-out prevention. You can download it as a pdf file.
7. Schools to Watch Conference June 25-27, Washington D.C. Conference registration info.
8. Educational Technology Leadership Conference, June 24th at Holt High School, Holt, MI. Register for the event.
9. ISTE Eduverse Talks are the recorded sessions held on ISTE Island every week. Join ISTE in their Second Life conference location for their weekly talks on education.
10. The Michigan Association of Middle School Educators Annual Conference is coming up March 4-5, 2010 in Dexter, MI. MAMSE will be celebrating its 40th Anniversary!
11. Classroom 2.0’s Live Calendar.
12. Classroom 2.0’s Ning Blog: This week’s discussion is on “Student Web Radio Broadcasts” for Teachers. Archived content is available.
13. Second Life:
* No Events specified. Regular Tuesday meetings are scheduled. See the board on the ISTE Island for up to the minute details.
* Video: Educational Uses of Second Life

ATTENTION Michigan Association of Middle School Educators & Friends: MAMSE is putting together a bus for the trip to the National Middle School Association’s Annual Conference in Indianapolis, IN this fall. Ride down to the conference in a luxury bus. With all the conversations with middle school teachers on the bus, I wonder if we could call this a mini-MAMSE conference? There’s nothing like getting together with people who love the people we love: our students. Getting together with folks like that is energizing and priceless. Email Teresa Sutherland for information and details. Don’t forget to mention you heard about it on Middle School Matters.

Web Sitings:

A CRITICAL MISSION: Making Adolescent Reading an Immediate Priority in SREB States

Nationwide, students in the middle grades and high school are failing to develop the
reading and writing skills they need in order to meet higher academic standards later
in their educational careers.

While most of the 16 Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states have seen
recent gains in reading achievement in the early grades, the same cannot be said
of achievement in the middle grades and high school. There is also evidence that
students who struggle to meet academic standards in subjects such as science and
mathematics have poor reading skills.
The good news is clear: We now know how to solve this problem.

Too many students begin to fall behind in reading after they leave the early grades.
By ninth grade, many struggling readers are destined to become high school
dropouts. By college, one in four freshmen must take remedial reading classes —
and few of these students finish a degree.

Students who leave eighth grade with weak reading skills quickly fall behind in
high school. More students in SREB states repeat ninth grade than any other grade,
swelling ninth-grade enrollment by 14 percent in the SREB median states in 2005.
Students who falter in ninth grade are likely to become high school dropouts.

Although formal reading instruction stops after the early grades for most public
school students, many researchers and educators now realize that it should continue
through high school. Reading skills do not advance automatically, even for students
who read at grade level when they begin the middle grades. While most students
continue to develop speaking skills naturally, they do not develop advanced reading
skills on their own — particularly the ones they need for success in high school and
college.

“Most [teachers] devote little, if any, class time to showing students, explicitly, what
it means to be a good reader or writer in the given subject area. And most students
engage in very little discussion of what they have read,” according to a 2007 Alliance
for Excellent Education report.

Across the country, states have an obligation to take immediate action to improve
students’ reading and writing skills. Accordingly, the Committee recommends that
each state set policies that will lead to improved practices at the state, district and
school levels. These policies should call for each state to:

define the specific reading skills students need in order to master each key subject.

identify the best teaching strategies to help middle grades and high school students develop their reading comprehension skills in each subject.

ensure that these strategies are applied statewide in all public schools by including them in professional development for current teachers and in preparation and licensure for new teachers.

provide the extra help that struggling readers need, so that all students read at grade level in the middle grades and high school.

Reading Programs Found Ineffective

A federal study intended to provide insight on the effectiveness of programs for reading comprehension has found that three such programs had no positive impact, while a fourth had a negative effect on student achievement.

In other words, the conclusion is that none of the four programs studied—Project CRISS, ReadAbout, Read for Real, and Reading for Knowledge—is effective.

They concluded that Project CRISS, developed by Creating Independence Through Student-Owned Strategies; Read About, produced by Scholastic Inc.; and Read for Real, created by Chapman University and Zaner-Bloser, had no effect on reading comprehension. In addition, they found that Reading for Knowledge, created by the Success for All Foundation, had a negative impact on the composite test scores and the science-comprehension test scores for students using that curriculum.

ATTENTION Michigan Association of Middle School Educators & Friends: MAMSE is putting together a bus for the trip to the National Middle School Association’s Annual Conference in Indianapolis, IN this fall. Ride down to the conference in a luxury bus. With all the conversations with middle school teachers on the bus, I wonder if we could call this a mini-MAMSE conference? There’s nothing like getting together with people who love the people we love: our students. Getting together with folks like that is energizing and priceless. Email Teresa Sutherland for information and details. Don’t forget to mention you heard about it on Middle School Matters.

Advisory Idea:

StickK.com: Here’s a tech based way to help your students modify their behavior. StickK.com is a website that helps you establish a goal you want to achieve, develop a plan to get there, and provide some motivation along the way. Students can put in a goal, establish a person as a Referee that monitors their progress toward that goal and inputs that information into the StickK.com website. The student can designate other StickK members as their friends to help them along the way with encouragement and co-participation. There is a second part to the site as well, but only for credit card holders. You can make it a financial motivation by inputting your credit card, designating an amount, and if you don’t reach your incremental goal, $10 is charged to your credit card that week. At the end of the challenge the money is sent to a charity you have designated in your name from the StickK site. The contract/financial motivation is optional.

Build self-confidence and help students get to know each other: Paper Bag Self.
The students decorate the outside of a paper bag with pictures and words that represent their “outer selves,” such as favorite color, sport, food, etc. Then, they put a word or picture inside their bag that reflects a personal concern, such as health, divorce, peer problems, grades, etc. As a way of introducing themselves to the class, students share the outside of their bag. If they feel comfortable, they are welcome to share the inside of their bag privately with their peers or advisor.

Another advisory group activity that creates the feeling of “family” and focuses on the individual as part of a whole is a puzzle activity. Each member of the class, including the advisor, is given a large cardboard puzzle piece to decorate. The puzzle piece features their name and artwork that reflects their uniqueness. When the pieces are complete, they are joined together to form a puzzle that represents a united advisory group.

Letters:

Western Michigan University (WMU)_ researchers have discovered no significant advantage to teaching students through experimenting instead of teaching them through direct instruction.www.physorg.com/news153990337.html (the summary includes this — “The data, while marginally favoring inquiry, really show that as long as the instruction is good either way, the two approaches (inquiry vs direct instruction) lead to no significant difference- at least as far as science content understanding is concerned” William Cobern of WMU’s Mallinson Institute for Science Education).

Students have been given cell phones loaded with educational software as part of a project at Trinity Meadow Intermediate School in Keller, Texas.www.ur.umich.edu/0809/Feb16_09/04.php (in story — “5th graders recieved phones containing “Mobile Learning Environment” software developed by University of Michigan scientist Elliot Soloway and Cathleen Norris, a regents professor at the University of North Texas. The software turns the phones into computers that can do almost everything a laptop can for a fraction of the price claims Soloway. Students use the phones to map concepts, animate drawings, surf “relevant” sites on the internet and integrate material into their lessons. The phones also have mini versions of Microsoft Word and Excel. The school district will examine whether listening to recordings of texts enhances at-risk student’s reading comprehension and will assess student’s technological savvy before and after the project.)

Web Sitings:

Press Kit for promoting the National Middle School Association’s Annual Conference. http://www.nmsa.org/annual/AbouttheConference/PromotionalTools/tabid/1882/Default.aspxEdublogs Live : Video recorded Elluminate education discussion events. Sue Waters, an Australian educator, hosts these discussions.
Fancy Talking Blocks: http://siftables.com/
NMSA’s Al Summers is posting his own blog about the NMSA 2009 Annual Conference in the run up to the big event. This from that blog: “NMSA is currently looking for “tech savvy teachers” to feature. We would like to highlight especially those who are doing project-based learning with a community and/or global impact. If you know of any teachers doing cutting edge work like this through technology, please e-mail me information—PLEASE DON’T POST IT ON THE BLOG. My e-mail is asummers@nmsa.org”NASA is Twittering from Space to increase its face time with readers & taxpayers here on Earth.
Obama Administration is cutting the Educational Technology budget by 63%. The money budgeted goes from $163 million dollars to $100 million dollars. I’m not sure I could even wrap my head around spending $100 million dollars just by myself.Make A Video For Mom: It is what it is. Enjoy. 🙂
Get your Cursive Handwriting App from the iTunes Store! Learn Cursive Today!
Future of Education (.com) Michael Horn of Distrupting Class will be on their podcast coming up.

The Aurora County All-Stars by Deborah Wiles: Walt Whitman meets Baseball. Good story for kids.

The Wings of Heroes by Richard Peck

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

Moodle Teaching Techniques & Moodle by William H Rice IV

MindSet by Carole Dweck

The Leader in Me by Stephen Covey

News:

My Coercive Classroom

By Cossondra George

When we become adults, life itself is coercive by nature. Most everything we do, we do with some amount of coercion present, in one form or another.
My curriculum is coercive. But while I often complain that the guidelines set forth by the state limit what I can and must teach students, I also know that – in the larger scheme – without those grade-level content expectations, students would be left to the whims of individual teachers as to what they are taught in school.
However, I think it’s unreasonable to hope for unfettered freedom in our current K-12 public education system.

It seems only fair to my students that I keep my classroom coercive. I want kids to leave the learning environment we’ve shared for a year knowing a lot more about math than when they arrived. I want to be satisfied that we have maximized our time together. I want them to learn, to grow, and to leave wanting to learn and grow even more—carrying with them the core math skills they’ll need in the grades and years to come.

The school board decided to remove speech and debate from the course schedule; there was no argument.

The best part of going back to school is seeing all your friends. The worst part is that your teachers won’t let you talk to them.

School is where you always try to do your best-except when your friends are watching.

Teacher: I told you to stand at the end of the line ?
Pupil: I tried, but there was someone already there !

Walking through the hallways at the middle school where I work, I saw a new substitute teacher standing outside his classroom with his forehead against a locker. I heard him mutter, “How did you get yourself into this?” Knowing that he was assigned to a difficult class, I tried to offer moral support. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Can I help?” He lifted his head and replied, “I’ll be fine as soon as I get this kid out of his locker.”

One morning I was called to pick up my son at the school nurse’s office. When I walked through the main entrance, I noticed a woman, curlers in her hair, wearing pajamas. “Why are you dressed like that?” I asked her. “I told my son,” she explained, “that if he ever did anything to embarrass me, I would embarrass him back. He was caught cutting school. So now I’ve come to spend the day with him!”

ATTENTION Michigan Association of Middle School Educators & Friends: MAMSE is putting together a bus for the trip to the National Middle School Association’s Annual Conference in Indianapolis, IN this fall. Ride down to the conference in a luxury bus with satellite access for Twittering, Facebooking, and other 21st Century technology access for less than $100.00. With all the conversations with middle school teachers on the bus, I wonder if we could call this a mini-MAMSE conference? There’s nothing like getting together with people who love the people we love: our students. Getting together with folks like that is energizing and priceless. Email Teresa Sutherland for information and details. Don’t forget to mention you heard about it on Middle School Matters.

LadyParadis Shadows surround me / I wear them like a warm cloak / another day sleeps #Haiku

Listener’s Letters:

Gents,

Again, I can’t tell you how much I enjoy your show. Once a week, I get up early with the birds, make a cup of coffee and listen to your podcast in silent reverence. Actually, scratch that. I get up with my two little ones, plug in my headphones as I run around trying to get ready for the day…but your show does have a Zen quality that calms me down and gives me confidence to face the day with my MS students.

I do have a question…next year, I am implementing a 1:1 notebook program with our middle school students. What resources would you recommend as I start staff training in using moodle and notebooks in the classroom? I know this is a huge question…but to whom else can I turn in my time of need?